Yesterday I watched Lance Armstrong's interview and was humbled but not shocked by it. Humbled for seeing someone confess his worse sins to millions of people and apologize for a series of mistakes that are probably eating him up now. What is truly surprising in all this controversy is how long it took for Lance to get nailed. Cycling and probably most sports have a culture of doping since the days of the Cold War when the East and West competed for supremacy by injecting their athletes with sophisticated substances to enhance performance, and battling over new ways not to get caught.
Here we have once again an individual, with all character flaws that humans have, aggravated by a series of events that made him feel above everybody else, having his life investigated and judged by nearly all cycling, sports fans and cancer fighters in the planet.
In a weird way I connected Lance Armstrong to Adolph Hitler after watching a documentary where Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge shares her recollection of the years when she lived with Hitler in a Berlin bunker. Poor Lance, am I now going to call him Hitler? No, the similarities and dangers in both cases start and end with the facts below:
- Both survived "near-death" experiences and believed that God was on their side for that and therefore they were above everything in the pursuit of a mission, and therefore they were never wrong (any similarities to recent Presidents line of thinking are a mere coincidence).
- They have created a legion of blind followers who would not question anything coming from them, from humble people looking for an end to their misery to Heads of State looking for simple solutions to complex human issues such as liberty, poverty and disease.
The first book I read about Armstrong was David Welsh's "From Lance to Landis - Inside the American Doping Controversy". One of the stories Welsh shares in his book is how Lance "mandated" that Trek discontinue Greg LeMonde's bike brand, erasing part of American's cycling history after LeMonde would not testify that Lance was clean (he repeated under oath what he heard from Betsy Andreu). What kind of person does this? Any angry person is subject to making nasty mistakes that will later be regretted, and he was probably very angry because Greg shared what he knew. I side with Greg on this one, between telling the truth or lying under oath I side with telling the truth, not for the oath vote but for the truth itself, which as life teaches over and over always prevails. When I say truth I mean facts, things that ocurred, not about what one believes to be truth, which I classify as faith.
Luckily we are only talking about a bike brand and a few obscure-to-most personalities, but many big decisions are made by individuals during moments of anger that have repercussion much wider than just a bike brand discontinuation. This is where Tocqueville's observation of the wisdom of the masses might prevail, but this assumes the masses are thinking. When people justify decisions based on what others are doing they forfeit the most important human feature of all: free will.
Lance is and will always be an amazing inspiration of cancer survival. While I read Welsh's book I also read "It's Not About the Bike", Lance's life in his own words. His battle against cancer was an amazing one and the work that his foundation performs is outstanding, and we should never forget that there is always another side to any story. Looking at the Livestrong foundation's operational expenses (assuming they are real) Livestrong raised since its inception US$470 million, US$65 million of which only in 2011. This is a massive organization with people trying to make a difference, but as in every organization it needs checks and balances. Check out for yourself where the money goes:
http://www.livestrong.org/What-We-Do/Our-Approach/Where-the-Money-Goes
Every time I donate money I check how much of it is going to its cause and how much of it is used simply for its existence. If you believe the balance is good continue to give, if not keep the money for yourself, but don't blame Lance for giving him your money, we are all individuals with free will and we cannot blame anyone but ourselves for all the decisions we make, including the organizations we support.
Beware of super-heroes, they only exist in fiction but every culture in every corner of the planet has myths of heroes, so there is something inherently human about waiting for heroes to rescue us. My advice is that if you want a different world start by changing it yourself. Lance was trying to change the world in his own many times flawed way and many lined-up behind him to do so, leading to good and bad things. This is life, good and bad as always, let's keep trying to make it better than worse.
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